


Three Nights, Eight Years

by thestormkeeper



Category: The West Wing
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-01
Updated: 2020-05-01
Packaged: 2021-03-01 21:33:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,111
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23953888
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thestormkeeper/pseuds/thestormkeeper
Summary: FromYou really like the dress?toI like the sound of your voice.
Relationships: Danny Concannon/C. J. Cregg
Comments: 14
Kudos: 42





	Three Nights, Eight Years

**Author's Note:**

> It always frustrated me that CJ and Danny's relationship jumped so far forward in season 7 without too much build up, so, here's some of that build up.

When Toby points out that she’s been close with Danny for eight years, she isn’t sure if he knows how close. She’s never sure with Toby, but some days it feels like he knows everything.

\---

_2000_

The first time is not long after he’s left her press room, when she can still kid herself that maybe, _maybe_ they could make it work if he wasn’t in that room, still young enough and hopeful enough that she can smile and laugh and have fun.

He was back in town for Christmas, and in a fit of reckless optimism she replies to his email _gonna be in town for the holidays, wanna catch up?_ with _Sure. Dinner at mine?_ , hitting send before the panic can really set in. When the night comes around she’s distracted by a painting and Christmas and _Josh_ to think too much of it, until the buzzer went, and she still has wet hair from the shower.

CJ takes a deep breath before she opened the door.

“Hey.” It comes out in an exhale, the relief of a long day being over and seeing a friendly face.

“Hey. How’re ya doing?”

She’s promised herself tonight wouldn’t be awkward, that it’s just two friends catching up, and as she poured the wine, she asks how the new assignment was going.

“It’s good. It’s refreshing to be out of Washington for a change. It’s a different point of view, outside D.C.”

CJ bites back a comment about Danny being a White House reporter. They’d settled for a cordiality following his refusal of the editor position, in which he didn’t push her anything more than friendship, and she didn’t push back when he accepted an assignment outside her press room.

“You like being among the people.”

“There’s more to politics than polling data, CJ.” She wants to wave him along, to talk about something other than work, but he tells her stories about a taxi driver working eighteen hours a day to put six daughters through dance classes, about a student sending money to his dad to pay for cancer treatment, about protestors stopping runways being built, and his passion is infectious. She tells him about pardoning turkeys, about the Butterball hotline, about stories he couldn’t hear while he worked in the press room. By the time the food arrives, they’re on their third glass of wine, and he’s enthusiastically regaling her a tale of a football team for trauma survivors when he changes the subject.

“I heard about Josh.”

She pauses, frozen over prawn crackers. “You can’t have heard about Josh, Danny. You’re not allowed to have heard about Josh.” Her tone is serious, and she won’t allow the edge of fear that she feels, the threat of her friend being exposed.

“I don’t have my notepad with me, CJ. I’m not here for a story. Josh is my friend too, and you’re not the only person I keep in touch with at the White House.”

“How did you hear?”

“Katie mentioned he had a shitty looking bandage on, Josh told me himself he wasn’t sleeping. We’re not interested in your personal lives; you know that. But he’s my friend, and I’m worried for him. I figured you might be too.”

CJ lowers herself back to her chair, letting the fight leave her and keeping her eyes focused on her cracker, crumbling it apart in her hands. It had been a long day, a long week, and she hasn’t heard from Josh all day.

“He saw a therapist today,” she admits, keeping her voice low as though that would stop it feeling like less of a betrayal. “Donna’s taking him to the hospital. I called him when I got home, but he didn’t pick up.”

Danny is silent for a moment, before covering her fidgeting hands with his. “Do you want to call him again?”

She does, more than anything, but her guilt at not noticing his pain earlier becomes hesitation at not wanting to bother him now.

“It’s Christmas Eve at the Emergency Room. He might not be back yet, and if he is, he might not have checked his messages. But he’ll want to know that he has friends around him.”

CJ turns her hands over, lacing her fingers through his and offering a squeeze of gratitude, before leaving him at the counter to pick up the phone. “Start eating, I’ll just be a second,” she calls over her shoulder.

But the phone rings and rings and no one picks up, and her brief hopefulness gives way again to despondency. As she places the phone back to the cradle, she feels Danny appear behind her again.

“He’s probably still at the ER. Come grab some food. We can call him again later.”

And so they eat, and Danny coaxes her smile back with more tales of life in America, life that sometimes seems so far from her own she wonders if she lives in the same country as those people.

After the food, Danny clears the plates despite her protests. She calls Josh again, and leaves a message this time, a too long, too rambling message that shows her panic, and when she finally stops talking, Danny is there to take the phone out of her hand and draw her into his arms.

That’s the first time.

\---

After that, there is silence for a while. He is afraid to push the boundaries, and she is afraid to lead him too far, to offer him something she can’t, yet. When he calls to tell her about his conversation with Ellie, they are polite and brief, and it’s only in the pause before they hang up that anyone would know there was any more they want to say.

He emails her first, when the President goes public with his health, a note to her personal email which just says _I’m sorry_ and she responds, _I can’t talk about this_ , and then again, a few minutes later, _Thank you_.

She emails him first, after Simon is shot and she feels like the world is swamping her, throwing more punches than she can weather. She tells him the story of Josh and Toby missing the motorcade, of the epic adventure it took them to get back, and of the different ways that Donna, Josh, and Toby all tell the story. She writes, _They seem inspired by the people they met on the way though, so maybe you were right. Maybe it’s a different point of view out there._ She doesn’t write, _I’m furious that I gave everything to swear loyalty to a man who betrayed my trust_ , or _I thought I would be allowed something with this guy_.

\---

_2002_

The second time isn’t when he returns to her press room, not at first. There’s the elation she feels, before she remembers that if he’s in here that means that nothing can happen, that’s the line, and that if he’s chasing a story that means she can't flirt with him (except she does), can’t even _talk_ to him (except she does), not really, not about work, because no matter how much he says he isn’t, his instincts will always be alert for the slightest slip, the slightest sign of something amiss.

He’s still there when she gets back from visiting her father, and she can’t quite look him in the eye for a while, as though if she does, he’ll know about Marcus. It’s not quite guilt that she feels, but a responsibility to not hurt him. He asks about her dad anyway, even though she’s avoiding him, and she’s mad at herself for avoiding him, and mad at him for not letting her.

After she gets shot at again, she knocks on his door.

“Did you know that at the exact moment of the equinox, you can balance an egg on its end?”

“That’s a myth.”

“I did it, tonight! It worked!” She pushes past him into his apartment, and all he can do is stand there, hand still on the closed door, unable to quite understand what’s happening.

“You got shot at again.” He’s seen the report, and maybe two years ago things would have been different, but he knows she’s been avoiding him and he’s been chasing a story that could damage her President. He hadn’t expected her to come to his door tonight.

Her body is full of energy, tense, and excitement that the egg had stood vertical on its end, that she’s still alive, but Danny is quiet, and full of fear. “Yes.”

He walks over to her, and she waits, unsure exactly what he needs from her, until he reaches for her, and kisses her roughly. “I wish they wouldn’t do that.”

That’s the second time.

She thinks maybe this time will lead to something; it’s the second term, and for all the time they’ve been spending together not being together, no one has said anything. Somehow, the world feels lighter for a moment, like they beat the MS and they can beat anything else, and like her boys have faith in her being able to do her job, for the first time, and she can forget he’s not writing a story that could pull apart the administration.

She stays the night, and in the morning, she feels giddy, laughing at his sleepy grogginess until she figures out his coffee machine enough to revive him. They spend the morning pretending the world doesn’t exist, until his phone rings and it’s his researcher. He takes the phone into the other room, and CJ tries not to listen but she hears enough to know that it’s about Sharif. By the time he returns, she’s dressed, her face serious again.

“I should go.”

“I’m sorry, CJ.” And somehow it seems that that’s what he’s always saying, and she can’t understand how one person can bring so much comfort and cause so much pain.

Then Zoey goes missing, and the President invokes the 25th Amendment, and she tells him to print the Sharif story, and life is going full throttle again, with no time for personal problems.

This time though, he comes to her before he leaves. They both seem to have an understanding of how this works, although they tread carefully, like one wrong step could cause an earthquake. He knows she can’t commit to a relationship, and she knows that the line between a romantic relationship and friendship is in the eye of the beholder, and that he’ll take what he can get. He’s leaving the press room again, so they share more take out food (neither of them can cook) and say their goodbyes slowly, whispering apologies they can’t say into skin and hoping the other knows.

That’s the third time.

\---

They stay in contact over email again, although she asks him to only use her personal email, and she doesn’t log in on work computers. When Ben gets in touch, she’s still thinking about Danny, until Danny ends his email _I hear Hoynes is writing a book_ , and she can’t reply, can’t look at the email, so she calls Ben back instead.

\---

_2004_

When the book is published, he’s in town to cover the start of the election, and he calls to suggest a drink. She hasn’t replied to his emails, although things with Ben have long since fizzled out, and she’s once again wondering if it’s bad luck or if it’s her. He’s emailed a few times, with stories from the field, and to congratulate her on a seemingly unfathomable promotion. In the midst of her self-doubt, as she tries not to show how much Toby’s disbelief gets to her, his short, _Congratulations. You’re going to be incredible_ carries her through the day, and breaks through some of the anger that had somehow become directed at him, although she’s forgotten why.

It’s been months, and she’s comfortable in her role, yet every relationship feels different somehow: Josh resents her promotion, and Toby, even Toby, who’s always in her corner, is uncomfortable taking orders from her. So maybe she agrees out of nostalgia, to be thrown off her game in a way that feels familiar, instead of all the new ways life is halting her now.

By the time she arrives, late to a late scheduled drink, he’s nursing a beer, and looking as though he might be about to give up on her. It had been Margaret who’d finally pushed her out of the door, although she’d noticed that Carol had come in to speak with Margaret when they thought she wasn’t looking.

It isn’t a dive bar, exactly, that he’s picked, but a place that was on the fringes of the Washington elite, where politicians and press mixed freely, and she knows he’s picked it for that reason; everyone is too busy chasing their own ends to notice anyone else. It has enough dark corners that they can talk quietly, but with enough respectability that it could be any other, all above board, meeting. Still, her security team look a little too out of place standing inconspicuously near the booth.

She orders a drink at the bar before she approaches him, trying to give herself time. He greets her warmly and she knows she’s stiff and strange in response, but she feels his warmth seep into her, letting it push through the stresses of the day.

At first their conversation is light-hearted, and they stick to the safe topics of what he’s been up to and how she’s feeling about her new position. But what he’s been up to is covering the start of the election, and it’s not long before he asks the question,

“Do you think it’s going to be Hoynes?”

CJ breathes out sharply, angry that they couldn’t stick clear of this topic, angry that her life hadn’t gone in a wildly different direction just to avoid this moment. For a moment, she wonders if this was the purpose of getting her here tonight.

“Are you on the record?”

“Not even slightly. I can get another drink if you’d like, you can claim anything I write is the ramblings of a drunken lunatic.”

She grins at that, although it doesn’t lighten her mood.

“Have you read his book?”

“Yeah. You’re not in it.”

She continues to stare at her bottle, wondering if she should let the conversation keep going this way, or if he’d see through her anyway. If there’s anyone she wants to confess her darkest sins to, it’s Danny, who always looks at her with respect, even in the early days when no one else did. She wonders how far she can go before that look goes away.

“So I’ve heard.”

“It’s odd, don’t you think? A book by one of the highest figures in the country about his sins and errors, about all his battles in the White House, and it doesn’t feature one of the most powerful women in the country? I seem to remember you guys going head to head many times.” He pauses, recognising a guarded discomfort in her. He knows she’s not in that book for a reason, although it defeats him to figure out what it is. CJ’s a private person, who stands in the limelight only so much as her job requires it, but to remove herself from a book like this is a drastic move.

“Do _you_ think it’ll be Hoynes?” CJ asks after a moment, still refusing to make eye contact, and refusing to rise to his comments.

“Is there anyone better, right now? The strongest candidate is Bob Russell, and don’t think we don’t know how you guys refer to him.”

“Then I guess it’ll be Hoynes.” She looks despondent, defeated, and it’s a look he’s seen too many times in the capital of the free world.

“If people accept his story. He’s really trying to clear his name.”

CJ pauses again, planning every word of what she says next, knowing the impact it could have. “There’s more out there. His book doesn’t contain everything.”

The dots come together slowly, and when they do, he’s not sure he wants to believe it.

“His book doesn’t contain you.”

She looks him at him directly this time, but her eyes are hard and her jaw is set. He wants to reach out to her and tell her it doesn’t matter, that the world would forgive her, that this wouldn’t ruin her career, but it’s not true, and she wouldn’t believe him. The anger in her eyes is the anger of a woman who knows that there is no nuance in the eyes of the public, and that in this age of sexual enlightenment the woman can still only be the Magdalene or the Madonna and there is no inbetween. He wants to reach out to her and tell her it doesn’t matter to him, which is true, but he doesn’t know if she’d believe him. Instead, he meets her on her level, offers her something which could be the truth.

“There’s a better candidate out there. Josh will find them.”

CJ stays quiet. She knows the offer that Hoynes has made Josh, and she knows Josh’s fondness for the man. She can’t blame him, he doesn’t know, but she can’t pretend it doesn’t make her nauseous to know that a man she thinks of as a brother could put a man who makes her skin crawl into the most powerful seat in the country.

“Maybe we’ll get a Republican.”

CJ chuckles, tired, but relieved to have confessed her sins and come out the other side. Toby knowing is one thing, but Toby knows what it is to look in the mirror and see darkness. When she can’t look at herself, she wants to look at Danny and see his vision of her reflected back.

They stay for another drink, until CJ protests that she should go. She wants to invite him back to hers, but the days of the blurry lines of friendship seem too far in the past, and despite her confession it’s hard not to feel that they’ve grown too far apart; he’s no longer an ongoing question mark in her life. She likes the solidity of finally knowing where she stands with him, but she misses the sex.

He smiles at her warmly and offers, “It was good to see you again, CJ. Keep your head in the game.”

She offers him a kiss on the cheek, and she tells herself it’s only the sex she misses.

\---

When Toby points out that she’s been close with Danny for eight years, she isn’t sure if he knows how close.


End file.
